


the valkyrie rides

by sure sure (getoffmysheets)



Series: Red in Tooth and Claw [5]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Billy Hargrove Has a Crush on Steve Harrington, Billy Hargrove Needs Help, Billy Hargrove: Feral Cryptid, Child Abandonment, Child Abuse, Daemon Feels, Homophobia, M/M, Non Consensual Daemon Touching, Step-siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-15 22:17:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21025616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getoffmysheets/pseuds/sure%20sure
Summary: He wants just enough emotional distance between himself and the other person to put a coffin.It's where he's gonna end up anyway.





	the valkyrie rides

According to his mom, who is his most reliable source – or was, when she was still around – her name was the first word Billy learned. Not ‘mama’, definitely not ‘dada’, not even ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Her name is Valfreyja, but he’s only ever called her Freyja.

“Freyja!” he would scream in his high chair, and she’d be there, flying into his arms because any distance between them was too great.

She settled early, so for Billy, it’s almost as though she’s always been a cougar. He can barely remember a time when she was anything else.

It was just after his mother left. When Billy got hit, she would growl or hiss or roar and his father’s Doberman would bite down at her neck. Billy cries, because nothing hurts more than something hurting her. They _hate_ dogs.

Then Neil just-just _grabs_ at her, with his _bare hands_, and his father’s incredible anger is hammered into him, crushes him down. It almost feels like the rage imprints itself into him. Maybe it does, maybe it becomes part of him, because after the third time, Freyja stops being able to change.

Billy was nine.

He says ‘eleven’ whenever anyone gets bold enough to ask. It’s a little young to settle, but not young enough to raise eyebrows.

Not long after Freyja settles, Maxine and her mother move in.

Billy thinks Max is a whiny pain in the neck, but Freyja insists that she’s _theirs_.

He supposes she’s right. She usually is, even when Billy’s too mad to listen right.

Neil doesn’t have the patience for a six-year-old who needs attention and food and basic assistance with hygiene and everyday tasks. Susan can barely raise her voice above a whisper by the time they move in.

He and Freyja are the ones who make sure her shoes are tied, her hair is brushed, that there is cereal in her bowl at breakfast time. They make sure that no one at school will able to notice the lack of care her mother gives and laugh at her for it.

She’s an inconvenience Billy never asked for, and he snaps at her, yells at her, brushes her off when she tries to get too clingy with him. But no matter how angry she makes him, Billy never leaves her to fend for herself, not even when she earns him a beating.

When Neil packs them up and moves them to Indiana, his temper draws tight as a bow, and his impatience with her becomes cruelty. Even Billy back in California would be ashamed of the way Billy in Indiana treats her, but he’s lost _everything_.

When Mom left and the phone calls stopped coming, Billy still had the winding ocean highways, the endless blue waves, the salt-laden breeze to console him. But now he’s got nothing.

But no matter how great his rage, no matter how far his sanity seems to slip, Max stays with him, following him like a duckling, because no matter how unhinged Billy is, he’s _there_.

Other children remember Sunday dinners and playing ball in the yard or family vacations. Max got Billy, high on the beach at midnight, telling her about the constellations when the moon came up. For better or for worse, Billy half raised her, and it isn’t good or normal but he’s all she knows.

Freyja consoles her after the worst moments.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, they made a decision with each other that they’ve never actually had to discuss. He keeps about six feet of emotional distance between himself and everybody else. About the same size as a coffin. Billy’s comfortable with that, because at some point, they both silently acknowledged that Billy was a lost cause. It’s not that he can’t take care of himself – it’s that he _won’t_. He’s gonna live fast and hard, and die young and messy, and no person left alive will know who he really is, because Billy lost that person a long time ago.

But Maxine can still pick herself up and brush off Billy and Neil and Susan, make something outta herself. Freyja can still save Max and she protects her from the worst of what this family has to offer.

Billy doesn’t know what it means that he can feel so angry and out of control all the time while she stays so calm. He wonders sometimes if his connection to her is sort of…broken. Or if there’s something wrong with him.

Like…like the other thing that’s wrong with him.

He thinks he’s got a handle on it, that he’s pushed all that queerness down where it can’t come spilling out everywhere. But then Billy sees _him_.

_It shouldn’t even count as feeling queer_, Billy thinks, resentfully watching the fan of dark lashes over his cheeks. _Steve Harrington is prettier than every fucking girl in this damn school_. It ain’t Billy’s fault that Hawkins, Indiana is filled with two hundred cows and the prettiest boy he’s ever seen.

There are too many people at the Halloween party for him to identify which daemon is Harrington’s and at basketball practice, daemons of each team have to sit out on the sidelines. Billy’s top guess is a brilliant scarlet macaw who taunts and teases the other daemons with a playful air, flashing her plumage flirtatiously.

He hardly notices the little Aussie, ears pricked up to alertness despite looking otherwise half-asleep.

Billy damn sure notices her when she follows Harrington out to the showers, trotting at his heels. Oh, he _hates_ dogs. He feels a grin overtaking his face. It’s the sign he needs, the perfect excuse to push himself into rage rather than the waiting adoration he could so easily fall into. “I’ll be damned, Harrington,” he says, trying to get a clearer look at the Aussie. “I should’ve guessed you were a little bitch.”

Harrington’s daemon pauses and turns to stare directly back at him and Billy feels the shock of it go through him. She has a sweet little face, mottled with the same blue-grey as the fur along her back, her startlingly blue eyes outlined in black like eyeliner. The copper patches on either side of her cheeks make it seem almost as though she’s blushing, and the effect should make her look goofy and clownish, but she’s just as unbearably fucking cute as Harrington is.

She cocks her head and grins at Billy with all her teeth, and the penetrating blue of her stare seems to see right through him. It’s one of the most unsettling encounters he’s ever had with a daemon.

Then she sneezes abruptly and walks away, as though nothing had happened. He sees Harrington glance at Billy uneasily a moment before following her.

“Billy?” Freyja asks quietly, no doubt able to tell how spooked he is from that brief encounter.

“Stay away from her,” he answers in an undertone.

“I wouldn’t do anything,” she says, a little hurt, ears flattening slightly.

“I know you wouldn’t,” he says, palm resting on her skull. “But I don’t think you’d be able to help yourself.”

_Because I can’t help it_.

He wants to know what that fluffy fur feels like in his hands. How Harrington’s hands would feel on Freyja’s tawny pelt. Daemons often give away more emotional tells than their humans, which is why people are so surprised by how quiet and well-mannered Freyja is.

If Freyja gets too close to the Aussie, Billy knows that she’ll give everything away in a heartbeat, because he’s got no self-control.

He doesn’t even know her name.

He doesn’t learn it, either.

Harrington’s daemon never talks, not even to other daemons. This wouldn’t be weird if Harrington were a shy, quiet person because having a shy, quiet daemon would be entirely correct. But Harrington is friendly and affable enough, a little dumb and a little dorky but whatever. (Cute). The Aussie is silently watchful and distant, uninterested with their classmates, with an air about her that suggests that she and Harrington’s mind are somewhere else.

Billy hates dog daemons, and that’s why he knows it’s important to know what _kind_ of dog they’re dealing with.

Neil’s Doberman is a guard dog, designed to bite and bark and not good for much else. But Harrington’s Aussie is a herding dog. The kind of canine made to spend hours in a field, herding sheep, maybe even guarding the flock.

So what was she supposed to be guarding?

Not Harrington – Billy’s treatment hardly even got the Aussie to bat an eyelash and he didn’t seem to expect her to do much more than watch. Billy hated it, he hated how easily they dismissed his presence. But if dog daemon didn’t seem to think that her own human was her charge, what were the two of them protecting?

\---

“Lookin’ for my stepsister. Little birdie told me she was here,” Billy tells Harrington through the cigarette. Their chest hurts – Neil kicked Freyja in the chest. He knew hurting her was far more effective than hitting Billy.

“Huh, that’s weird. I dunno her.” The Aussie is pacing behind Harrington, back and forth in front of the Byers front porch.

“Small, redhead, bit of a bitch,” Billy drawls.

“Doesn’t ring a bell, sorry buddy.” It’s so obviously a lie that it would be nearly amusing if it wasn’t making Billy feel so slimy. Freyja is getting angry, impatient. She wants their girl back, wants to know that Max is okay.

Billy nods and pulls the cigarette from his mouth. “I dunno, Harrington, this whole situation,” he waves a hand around them. “It’s givin’ me the heebie-jeebies.”

“Yeah, why’s that?” The Aussie pauses, just to the left of the porch steps, her back all stiff and tense.

_Billy-Billy, what if he’s keeping her there? Why would he even want a thirteen year old girl_? His emotions boil up and Freyja lets out the peculiar growling hiss of an angry mountain lion. “My thirteen-year-old sister goes missin’ all day, and then I find her with you, in a stranger’s house, and you lie to me about it.”

“Man, were you dropped too much as a child? I don’t know what you don’t understand about what I just said. She’s not here.”

He points the cherry at the Byers’ front windows. “Then who’s that?”

“Ah shit,” Steve mutters. “Listen-”

He goes down hard when Billy shoves him, winded. “I told you to plant your feet.”

He loses his temper the way he always does, except this time, Freyja has lost her temper, too.

Their chests hurt and her mouth tastes like blood, and what the fuck is an eighteen year old doing with a little girl in a stranger’s house, anyway? With a bunch of middle school boys? He’s never had a problem with making Max cry, if it’s for her own good. Freyja will apologize for them later anyway.

“You’re DEAD, SINCLAIR!”

“No.” It’s still a shock to hear the Aussie’s voice – they don’t even realize that it’s her, at first. “_You_ are.”

That’s not even half as shocking as feeling her teeth clamping down on Freyja’s shoulder. She charges for her, ruthless as she sinks her jaw down past the fur, and Freyja screams for both of them. _Billy! Billy, she isn’t going to let go_!

He whirls on Harrington and sees a stubborn glint to his eyes, every bit as unyielding as that blue-eyed bitch of his.

Nothing hurts as much as when something hurts her. Billy doesn’t stop swinging until the needle pricks his neck.

\---

_“Billy? Do you hear me, Billy?” _

Billy’s gonna live fast and hard, and die young and messy.

Still, he was never expecting it to end like this. And it _is_ the end. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he’s known he was dead the moment that thing touched him.

“_Where am I? Where are we_?”

In the distant, _very_ distant, parts of himself that can still think independently, he wishes that Max had told him about what lived under Hawkins. He wishes he hadn’t been such a dick, so that maybe she might’ve thought Billy would believe her if she had.

Billy wishes he would’ve known what Harrington and the Aussie bitch were doing that night. He still isn’t sure, but the Shadow Thing knows them. It knows all of Them.

_Dangerous_, it says, flashing Billy an image of Harrington with a split lip and a baseball bat filled with nails. Of the Aussie charging forward with jaws open, and a sharp pain in his neck.

_Dangerous_, it says, showing the Byers mother, a tiny pale woman with a fragile face and doe eyes. Her daemon, some kind of monkey with silver and gold fur, staring at them with eerie red-orange eyes. Her face all red and sweating, and her enormous dark eyes hardened and angry.

_Dangerous_, it says, showing a large man that Billy recalls as a cop. No, not a cop. The Chief of Hawkins Police. He has a gun and his daemon is a huge retriever with teeth much too large for a dog, and she tears, tears with her teeth and never stops, will never stop.

_DANGEROUS_, it shrieks, with an image of the cop holding the hand of a little girl, then a woman standing behind her, eyes blazing as they roar together, baring their teeth in Shadow Thing’s face.

They are the only things It truly fears, and Billy will have to get rid of her.

“_Billy? Why aren’t you answering me_?”

Billy’s gonna live fast and hard. He’s gonna die young and messy. And there isn’t anyone left on this earth who’ll know who he really was, because the Shadow Thing took him, but he’s always been lost. Always left enough space to put the coffin in.

**Author's Note:**

> Daemons mentioned here:  
Artemis - Steve's daemon, a blue merle Australian Shepherd. Means 'safe and sound'.  
Valfreyja "Freyja" - Billy's daemon, a cougar. Means 'lady of the slain (in battle)". In Norse mythology, this is a title of the goddess Freyja, who ruled over birth, death, sex, war, and magic. She rode a chariot pulled by cats and guarded a magic necklace :D


End file.
